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July 20

How Many Calories Should You Eat To Lose Weight?

Posted by admin
Filed under Diet, Lose Weight | 15 Comments

How many calories should you eat to lose weight? Here’s a trick to calculate how much calories you should eat to lose weight:

Ideal weight (in kg) x 30 = Calories

Take your ideal weight and multiply it by 30. This should be the amount of calories you can eat a day. Of course this is not very precise because it doesn’t take important factors like lifestyle and gender into account.

Factors that influence how many calories you should eat:

  • Male/female
  • Active/sedentary life style
  • Age
  • Height
  • Weight

The US Department of Health and Human Services recommend the following numbers:

Sedentary lifestyle (less than 30 minutes of moderate physical activity/day)

  • Male 18-30 yo: 2400 calories
  • Female 18-30: 2000 calories
  • Male 31-50: 2200 calories
  • Female 31-50:  1800 calories
  • Male 50+: 2000 calories
  • Female 50+: 1600 calories

More active lifestyle (more than 30 minutes of moderate physical activity/day)

  • Male 18-30 yo: 2600-3000 calories
  • Female 18-30: 2000-2400 calories
  • Male 31-50: 2400-3000 calories
  • Female 31-50:  2000-2200 calories
  • Male 50+: 1800-2200 calories
  • Female 50+: 2200-2800 calories

These numbers will maintain your current weight.

To lose weight you should increase your physical activity and reduce your caloric intake.  Try to eat 400 calories less than you are used to and you will soon start losing weight.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 9:30 am and is filed under Diet, Lose Weight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “How Many Calories Should You Eat To Lose Weight?”

  1. Charlene on August 3rd, 2010 at 2:04 pm

    Did any of you stop and multiply your ideal weight by 30? If I want to be 110 pounds and I mulitply that by 30, it would equal 3300. It takes 3500 calories to make a pound.

  2. admin on August 6th, 2010 at 9:12 am

    Sorry, I forgot to mention that it’s weight in kilograms. 110 pounds is about 50 kg, so 1500 calories. That all seems a bit on the low side though…

  3. Alonso Sisk on August 29th, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    Howdy, truly a great web site. Thx for taking the time to create all these interesting articles :-)

  4. Marla on September 9th, 2010 at 4:26 am

    lol I was about to say the same thing as Charlene. If it would have been in pounds, I should be a stick figure instead of a blimp. :-p Thanks for the clarification.

  5. Weight Loss Coach on September 17th, 2010 at 12:37 am

    Great info to really calculate weight loss, but it’s important to also eat a proper balanced diet and each small meal you eat 5-7 times each day should have protein, carbs, essential fats, vitamins and minerals. And eat wet-based carbs like fruits and vegetables, instead of allot of breads and pastas. And don’t worry about the essential fats because they actually help burn fat in moderation.

    Bascally each healthy with the calories you eat, not junk, 2000 calories of cake each day is a bad idea for your health and weight loss progress.

  6. Building Muscle Mass on November 12th, 2010 at 1:24 pm

    Love the method of roughly calculating your caloric intake. You will definitely need to keep an eye on the type of foods that is being eaten. The total number of calories should be spread throughout the day.

  7. Get Slim on December 10th, 2010 at 6:15 pm

    Wow. Lots of info and statistics. I suppose in the end it’s down to common sense and getting good habits. Thanks.

  8. muscle x review on December 30th, 2010 at 8:50 am

    Ive always been a firm believere that counting calories is for the lazy, if you want to lose weight, just go work out!

  9. 11 day diet on January 6th, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    Thanks for the info. I didn’t realize there was such an easy calculation for getting a rough estimate of calories needed. For anyone wondering how to convert pounds to kilograms, there’s an online calculator here… http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight/pounds-to-kilograms.htm (Basically you can just divide your weight in pounds by 2.2 to get your weight in kilograms)

  10. Erwin on February 20th, 2011 at 2:34 pm

    It really interests me to find solutions to problems that are dealt with the mathematical way. The formula is simple and understandable enough. The next step is to put this into play.

  11. Peter on February 26th, 2011 at 4:15 am

    I am 24 and I need only 2400 calories to keep the ideal weight? I’m not sure about that. because even though we burn some calories with less than 30 min workout a day our bodies additionally burn lots of calories for basic stuff (like breathing, blood flow, etc) + everyday action (no one sits in one place whole day)

  12. Christina@fitness model workout on April 20th, 2011 at 6:07 pm

    Wow! That calculation is way easier that what I’ve been doing to reach my base caloric intake. Of course, then you have to adjust for the amount of activity you do, but this will make my life way easier. Thanks for sharing such a simple, common sense solution.

  13. Diane on July 1st, 2011 at 10:42 pm

    Just FYI. You spelled health wrong in your title of your blog. It needs to have a “T” in it. BTW, I LOVE this blog. It’s the first time I’ve come to it and will be looking practically daily for new posts. Keep up the great work!! :D

  14. admin on July 11th, 2011 at 5:13 pm

    @Diane Thanks a lot for pointing out the typo! Glad you enjoy the blog…

  15. Noline at Human Anatomy Course on February 1st, 2012 at 1:46 pm

    This is a nice simple formula.
    I do wander why an active female over 50 should be eating more than a male the same age?

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